Deep Space High - the school for everything about space

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Our aim is to help increase an understanding of space amongst children and their families, looking at topics such as:• What is space• An introduction to our universe• Space exploration and the UK’s involvement• Developments in space• Life in space and future space travel• And a myriad of fascinating facts to spark imaginationWe propose to do this through a series of short audio features that will engage with children, introduce and highlight the fun side of space, and inspire children and parents to find out more, either through organised education or as a recreational interest. We will be assisted by Dr Lewis Dartnell who currently works in the Centre for Planetary Sciences, UCL. Lewis has a great deal of experience communicating space science to audiences both young and old, and will assist ensuring our topics and material are relevant and informative.The features will be broadcast on Fun Kids, available to listen again on the Fun Kids website (www.funkidslive.com) and the UK Radioplayer, and available as free downloads on iTunes. We will also make them available as an educational resource for schools.The series will be supported by a dedicated micro-site on the Fun Kids website, where users will find additional information, images, videos, downloads and careers information, with links to find out more at the STFC and other agreed websites.The features will be informative and inspirational in style, and will be written for a core child audience aged 9 to 12 year olds, although from experience we know that both younger and older children will also listen to the features, as well as parents and carers. A secondary benefit is therefore encouraging parents and older siblings to also discover, and perhaps develop a family plan to learn more.We will promote the series on-air, with banners on our website, through editorial in our weekly newsletter and through associated press activity. We will also communicate with schools to make them aware of the series and that they will be able to download it for use within the classroom.To further help build awareness of the series amongst listeners, we will run a number of week long competitions during the project period. These will be in the form of simple Q&A competitions with opportunities for children to win books (we can assist with sourcing) and possibly other suitable prizes (which we can discuss). Towards the end of the project period, we propose to run a short story writing competition on a space theme, with the best stories recorded and broadcast on Fun Kids and available for download. We find that such competitions help inspire children and families to find out more about space, and think around the topics.We will measure success through listener reaction to the features, online visits as well as direct research with our parent panel, entries to the competitions and by the level of click thrus to third party websites. We will also review reaction to the supporting online material through Google Analytics.The overall impact that we aim to achieve is a greater understanding of space and the UK’s involvement, and to inspire children and their families to find out more, with perhaps a few children taking up science subjects to help lead them into a career in space exploration.